Some people with disabilities fall into a new gender category that I have started calling ‘the third sex’. In most bars and restaurants there are loos for men, loos for women, and disabled loos. And most ‘disabled’ hotel rooms are twin-bedded, not double-bedded.
The reason for this seems to be that some individuals don’t expect disabled people to have relationships… or, god forbid, want to have sex. Some people assume that having a disability leads to an automatic surrendering of the desire to mate.
I must choose my words carefully here. It is certainly not the case that this assumption applies to all disabled people (for example, I doubt that many deaf people face this). However, it is undoubtedly the case that many disabled people are confronted with this prejudice.
My own experience bears this point out in two ways:
Firstly, the opposite sex has never been more at ease in my company than they have been since my accident. I’m sure this is not because of any newfound sparkling wit, but rather because they don’t feel threatened in any way by me trying to chat them up.
Secondly, it is so often assumed that my wife Justine ‘stays with me’ because she has a ‘heart of gold’. People very rarely conclude that she might benefit from our relationship emotionally.
Yet another hotel (this time in Middlesbrough) had insisted on giving us a room with two beds, despite the fact that I had booked a double. Thankfully, we only spent one night there – cycling to Northallerton and then driving on to our hotel in York, where we were to be based for 2 nights.
We had entered Yorkshire: a county renowned for its no-nonsense hospitality. The first town we arrived in offered us some tea and biscuits to refuel because the local shop was shut.
The next day, we had stopped at the roadside to chat with Denise and her young son Ryan (they had been told, via Twitter, that we were passing). Denise spread the word about cheering me on to everyone she knew on Twitter. One of these people was the producer of the afternoon radio show on BBC Radio York.
So, the next day, after explaining my route to Pocklington to the Lord Mayor of York at our hotel, whilst trying to cross the horrifically busy A64 at about 4pm, I was interviewed live by the afternoon DJ. Despite the din from the traffic thundering by, I managed to get the Everything is Possible message across.
